Layers

The Grand Canyon “a library of the Gods”, Powell wrote, in which “ten thousand dark, gloomy alcoves served as reading rooms. “The shelves are not for books, but form the stony leaves of one great book. He who would read the language of the universe may dig out letters here and there, and with them spell out words, and read, in a slow and imperfect way, but still so as to understand a little story of creation” John Wesley Powell From p 215 Down the Great Unknown Edward Dolnick Perennial Books 2002

Geology is about learning to read. To extract from the rock the tale of the paleo processes that formed them. Occasionally to capture and trap instances of a blink in time where an ancient life form existed. Pages are layers. Layers are chapters. The subplots are the changes that took place when a rock trapped in a hole was spun to drill its way down through the rock. Or when an eruption poured its basalt over and into the canyon. Or even the dissolution of the limestone, percolating through the permeable sandstones and depositing its calcified remains as incredible travertine waterfalls. There is no single plot, but a series of short stories intertwined into a large novel.